Laughing With
by Cirae
Summary: She managed to burrow inside of him despite his better instincts. A two-shot story of how Finnick and Annie came together.
1. Drowning

Finnick claims that Annie managed to creep up on him. This is an imagining of just how she managed to do that.

Disclaimer: Suzanne Collins owns these characters and any book references belong to her.

* * *

Their eyes prey on me, dissecting each piece of my body and tasting me. An old woman, her yellow eyes swelling, mouths obscenities at me as I watch from where I have been perched on the stage. My mouth twitches, dropping the plastered smile for a moment. I scramble, regain it, and then flash her a wink. She's stripping off my clothes with her eyes; I feel the bile rounding up in the back of my mouth. The dirt of her district settles on her cheeks as her lips curl back.

The boy catches and redirects my eye. He ascends the stage, floating towards me, his smile already in easy imitation of my own. His hand finds mine, shakes it, and then he turns to wink at the crowd. His body is muscled, like mine was, and though he is not a volunteer, he has the appearance of one who has trained for this moment. A small chain on his neck catches the sun's glint.

Though years have now passed, I haven't quite gotten the hang of mentoring the children who greet me on this stage. Luckily, Sasha's more eager than Mags or I ever have been: her fresh victory seems to still spike her enthusiasm, and she happily greets those able-bodied tributes' whose mouths are frothing for blood.

The girl that takes to the stage now, however, is not one of those. Though she's pulled from the pool of seventeen-year-olds, she seems smaller or frailer somehow: her dark hair falls in curtains over her shoulders and she trips mounting the stage. A soft groan falls from the crowd; when she recovers, she attempts something between a giggle and a cough that does little to ebb their discontent.

She tumbles towards Sasha, and I see her sucking in long breaths to regain a sort of grace or ease. I catch the boy's eyes and see that sympathy flashes across them only for a moment. I had expected disgust or worse, but when they shake hands, he steadies her somewhat. She mouths a lost word of thanks before turning to the audience.

As we exit, Sasha gives me a weak smile. The lines in her cheeks cannot surrender entirely to the powder they've coated her face with.

"Well, suppose this it, again."

The crowd disperses. We are ushered to our car, and as we climb in, Sasha presses her polished fingernails to her lips.

"We save the boy, yes?"

Flippant, airy Sasha. Her dyed red curls fall near her altered red eyes: no longer the green of our district, but instead set to a constant glare.

I see the girl swim before me, teetering slightly as she waves to the crowd. I picture her sobbing her goodbyes to her family.

"She's not worth it, Finnick," she says, shaking her head.

I toss my head back, staring out the window as I drink in the last tastes of sea salt that linger in the air.

"Of course," I say. "Of course."

Yellow eyes, red eyes, and the last bits of sea salt intermingle with the girl's dark hair and threaten to choke me.

#

Some hours later, we sit down to watch the recap of the reapings. The girl sits immobilized, but not shaken in the way I expected. Her hands are clasped on her lap, and she absorbs the flashes on the screen.

"You'll want to make allies with that one," says Sasha off-handedly as a stocky tribute appears on the screen. She points out others who are rugged or beautiful or whose mentors she already has spoken to.

The girl nods, thinking these notes are for her. The boy chuckles when a twelve-year-old clamors up to the stage, struggling to reach up for the hand of his mentor. The girl's eyes flash to him, and he sinks back with a sigh into his chair.

"To bed," I say plainly as a pair of grey-eyed children pop off the screen. "Long day ahead."

They disappear, the girl trailing after the boy. I hear her tinkling voice fading away.

"I won't be able to kill any of them," she whispers.

"Oh, you will," snaps the boy. "You'll kill me, if it comes down to it."

"No," she murmurs. "I—"

"Stop it, Annie," hisses the boy. "Stop making this so difficult. We'll be allies, okay, if you can pull this together, but you have got to know where we're going. Get your head on straight. Do you hear me?"

The faintest voice—almost a whimper—answers him. Her door clicks shut, and I hear him stomping down the halls.

She's not worth it, Finnick. I hear Sasha's voice echoing, and when I sink to my bed, the girl haunts my dreams. She endures the murders that I watched and some that I committed over and over again. Blood drowns her, and though she claws against the walls, trying desperately to free herself of the space I've trapped her in, she's caged.

You have to know where we're going, the boy said.

Yes, I think. I was right to bet on the boy.

#

When I come down to breakfast, I find Annie sitting at the table and clicking her heels together. She stares at a plate of oatmeal and berries, surveying it as though she plans for it to rouse to life and bite her.

"You can eat it, you know," I say. "It's good, really."

She looks at me, tilting her head, and smiles.

"Finnick, right?"

I nod, sitting across from her and popping a cube of sugar into my hot chocolate. Sasha and the boy are busy discussing strategy already, or they were when I passed them in his room. Sasha had given me a wink, waving me away when I tried to intervene.

"Keep the girl company," she had said before turning back to the boy. "Now, you said you've had practice with a spear? Not surprising…"

I decide to try this with Annie, who is currently munching on a berry. The red juice lines the top of her lower lip.

"So, Annie," I begin. "Are you—erm—good with any weapons? A spear, maybe? Or a knife?"

She pops another berry in her mouth, not bothering with her fork.

"Oh, not really," she says. "I mean, I've helped my dad sometimes fishing. But I'm nothing really. Knots, maybe. But not with weapons."

She pauses, and then flicks another berry between her teeth. "Nothing like you and a trident."

"Really just an overgrown spear," I say, trying to displace the memories that stir at the mention of the trident.

For a moment, she's laughing: it's not the silly giggle from the reaping, but a laugh that bounds across the room and buries itself in my chest. I think she'll topple over, but she just swings and laughs and grins as I begin to laugh with her. We stay like that for awhile, and the demons inside me seem to descend ever so slightly. Then we both begin to stumble over our laughs as the room fades into silence. We push around our food awkwardly, and I lock onto the passing images in the window. When I do look up at her, I see that fog clouds her eyes, and she drops her gaze.

"Annie," I say quietly. "You do know what you have to do, don't you? To stay alive? You may not be any good with a weapon, but we need to start somewhere."

Her eyes cut to me, narrowed and brimming with the same sea green I've seen my own eyes reflect on camera. They're the eyes of someone who has sailed the waters of District 4 and they bear down on me, boiling and hot.

"Oh Finnick," she says. "I know what they say about me. But when I say I won't kill anyone, it's not because I'm stupid and don't understand what this is all about. I mean that I can't. I can't throw a spear, I can't burn someone, I can't bite someone, I can't do anything. I am going to die and you and the rest of this world are going to laugh while I die."

I meet her gaze, and all at once she throws her arms around my neck and buries her face against the crook of my neck. I have held so many women like this, but never held anyone quite like Annie. She is all sea salt, that same sea salt from the car and from my home; she isn't drenched in some artificial perfume or dyed the color of roses.

I can't say anything to this girl, I think. All sponsor donations will be saved and sent to the boy, all attention and strategy lauded on him. She will enter the arena with nothing save what little strategy she can muster on her own. For awhile, perhaps, the boy will protect her. Then he will desert her, or be killed and leave her to die.

"I…"

I try to pull some charm back into my voice as I squeeze her shoulders.

"I would never laugh, Annie," I say. "Now, how about we try to find a way to make a weapon out of those knots, eh?"

It's all I can manage in the situation.

#

She flits across the screen, vanishing into trees or nests that she carves out of the ground. Annie's strength, I soon learn, is her ability to hide. The other tributes care little for her, but she does well assisting her pack of allies by disguising them. I suppose suggesting she go into defensive training at the knot tying and camouflage stations paid off in this way.

Still, as the days tick away, I worry she is doing too well. She and the boy evade the few deaths and do little to capture the attention of the cameras. I see her bright eyes sinking into her hollowed face and watch as she wilts from starvation before me.

Eventually, they lead them to food and water, but it's too easy and Annie should know this. I sense that she's worried, that the Gamemakers are tugging them into a trap, but she follows him anyway.

The blow comes too quickly for him to evade. No weapon that we could have sent would save him. His blood washes over the ground and his attacker continues to hack at him even after the cannon sounds. The attacker's eyes burn and he turns for her, but Annie's gone. She tears through the arena, strangled cries struggling to get out of her throat. Then she's digging into one of her nests, her sobs surrounding me in our far-away, paneled room. Over the next days, her eyes appear swallowed up in a film of waste and starvation; she doesn't eat the food we send until it's gone bad. I watch her melt into the mud and try to keep my interviews light to the press. She's strong, Annie, I assure them. She'll pull through. But of course, I can't imagine how when I see the diminished girl on screen.

#

Too little blood—that's what causes them to send the flood. The waves rip through the tributes, racking their emaciated bodies up against rocks and trees and hurtling them against each other. Some hack away at other tributes in the water, staining it red, before succumbing to the waves themselves. They do this for hours, fighting for the bits of material that they can float on, until it's only Annie paddling and diving away from it all.

Annie. The blood still seeps from the last remaining tribute when she surfaces, staring at the stream of bodies that are being drawn up by the hovercraft claws. She struggles against the one that takes her, screaming, her eyes wild and dazed as she thrashes.

I do not celebrate. One look at her eyes and the blood that stains the water and I know that she should have died.

#

Annie flickers between consciousness and the deadened sleep that I must also have assumed after I was plucked from the arena. I stay with her, or watch her from behind the one-way glass that separates her from her team. Her prep team and stylist are beside themselves over her victory and are just itching to get their hands on her for alterations. However, when Annie does come to, it's to laugh hysterically or to scream at them to run. Eventually, they resolve that she isn't ready for alterations of the surgical kind. They polish her body, dunking it in creams and troughs of sand-like scrubs. She surfaces only to mumble about heads and maces.

Congratulations, I'm told, are in order. I am pushed on television to wink suggestively and to thank my own admirers for supporting Annie. I reassure them that Annie is just giddy to see them. As I say this, I imagine her wailing back in her too-white room.

When I come to collect her, her eyes stare steadily at the wall. I approach, and she reaches up to touch my cheek, then draws back as if I am an open flame. She moans, whimpering and trying to disappear beneath her hospital sheets.

"Annie," I whisper. "It's okay. You're not in the arena anymore."

I brush back a strand of her hair, tentatively. Her hair's glossy from the polish and runs easily through my fingers. She still sinks beneath the hospital sheets, but at least she stops whimpering.

"They killed him," she says. "All of them."

I press my finger to her lips. "It's over, Annie. You need to get ready for your interview, and then it's all over. You understand?"

But of course I'm lying. It's only beginning for Annie. She has a year or so, I think. I shiver, recalling that I am due for the celebrations. I have many offers now, Snow hissed, now that Annie has been so successful.

#

I instruct the stylists to play up Annie's paleness, her hollow cheeks. Make her eyes look wider, I tell them. Keep her hair simple. I want the Capitol to see an uninteresting victor of an uneventful games: forgettable, possibly mad, that's what I want for Annie. I want them to ignore her.

I take her hand before she goes to the interview.

"Remember," I tell her. "Just get through it. Find a spot on the screen and stare at it. Laugh occasionally. Smile. It'll be over soon enough."

She looks away from me, dazed. "Finnick," she whispers. "I'm scared."

I draw her back so that her eyes find mine and seem to clear somehow. I imagine her sailing, laughing, tying knots with me. The girl I sent to the arena surfaces for a moment, and I see the frightened child that no one—including me—wanted to bet on.

"Just get through it," I say, unable to draw the sunken quality from my voice.


	2. Dancing

Here is the second part of the story! Enjoy. :)

Disclaimer: Suzanne Collins owns these characters and any book references belong to her.

* * *

A woman with jewels tethered to her lips runs her fingers along my bare chest. She orders me to kiss her, touch her. Here, no here, she says. She purrs, flashing her too-blue eyes as she sits up. Tell me a joke, she says. I charm her, spin her yarn after yarn, and she returns in kind with ramblings about this Capitol man and his slandering wife. She tells me she stole his diamonds and had them sewn into her body.

"Messy procedure," she laments. "I had to get three polishes just to get rid of the scars."

She dismisses me in the morning, winking her synthetic eyelashes. I taste the acidic quality of her perfume on my body and hurry to the room that has been set aside for me. I run the shower until it scalds my flesh, turning it pink and tender. I can still taste her, and no amount of water burns her off my tongue.  
Here, at least, my tears get washed away. I lay under the water, allowing it to singe my skin, and then run lotions and oils that cover me in some sort of rustic scent. I comb back my hair, leaving it wet, trying to imagine that I am diving through the sea at home.

"Finnick, it's time for lunch," comes a call at my door. Perhaps if I ignore the voice, they will leave me here. But no, today is for interviews, for parties, for any number of festivities where I must pull on my usual mask.

I am swarmed by my stylist and prep team, whose familiar hands run over my body and trim my hair. I am swallowed up by them, guided to tables, and begin to chirp and prance as I have been taught.

"Would you care," I say as I tempt one of the Capitol women, tossing on a smile, "for something sweet?"

#

I do not recognize her. She floats through the room, eyes settled on a point I can't distinguish. I don't think she's been altered, but her smooth physique has settled into its own beneath her polished scars. Her dark hair's swept up, revealing her neck, and she slips in-between the slew of Capitol people and victors that litter the floor.

Of course, this is not the first time I have seen her since we arrived home after her victory. We are neighbors, mentors, and often thrown together for interviews. But Annie is slippery: she pops up unexpectedly, wielding odd gifts for me at my door, or asking me if I've seen a cat that she claims to have. She'll start a conversation and then walk away.

I don't try to talk to her when I don't have to. Whatever she sees during those far-off looks frightens me, and I have enough nightmares of my own to wrestle with.

She's no longer a child, though. She wasn't much of one when I met her, I suppose, but from where I now see her staring at me from across the room, she is far from the girl who tumbled onto the stage. Frightening, really, considering the fate of beautiful victors.

I try to break her gaze, to shake her away, but all at once she's in front of me, soaking me up in her eyes.

"Hello, Finnick," she murmurs.

"Hello, Annie," I say, trying to roll my voice into its usual flamboyant flair.

She touches my arm, caressing long fingers against the slender muscle. She runs her eyes along the places that she's touched, and then entwines her hand in mine.

"Finnick," she says, smiling at the end of my name. "Will you ask me to dance with you?"

I start, then catch the curious eye of an onlooker and beam.

"That's rather forward of you, Annie. Who is to say I'm not spoken for tonight?"

I wink, chuckle, and try to wrench my hand away from hers. She tugs me back, pulling me towards the dance floor.

"You're not," she says simply.

It's more Annie leading at first as she forces me to twirl and dip her, but I realize that dancing with Annie is a lot like swimming. Her body bends and falls, rolling against mine as we glide across the floor. Her lips curl, and there's that laugh slipping out. Only this time, the warmth that it ignites within me is unmistakable, and in so many ways different than that one years ago.

I break away from her, throwing her slightly off balance. I try to turn it into a saucy spin, but she's left on the floor, fading from view as I escape the heat of the room, the heat of my forehead, and the heat of her.

#

Sea salt. I taste it on my tongue when I wake. My bedroom catches the cool breeze of the sea and traps it; I keep the window open so that it will wake me on the nights that I can't pull myself out of the nightmares. The sharp breeze and the salt stir me, forcing me to my bathroom where I can scrub the blood and dirt that I imagine has settled on my face. Nothing but stubble, really, which I shave off easily. Keep the boyish look, I remember my stylist saying so, so many years ago. We've got to wrench that stuff off, he'd said.

The footfalls pull me up, and I raise my razor at what my mind stupidly expects is a Mutt creeping around in the hall. It takes several swallows of breath to shake this, but I don't drop the razor. I slink around, ready to wield it at whomever has invaded my bedroom. Some Capitol person sent by Snow, maybe, but that can't be. Unless—

Annie's dark hair swings into vision, and she turns to smile at me.

"Hello, Finnick," she says. "I thought you'd be here."

"Well, of course I'm here," I say breathlessly. "This is my room."

She laughs, turning her eyes up to the ceiling. "Do you always wander around your room naked, Finnick?"

Ah, yes. Modesty. I'd forgotten that. I snatch up a pillow to cover me, irritation brimming at my cheeks.

"What are you doing here?" I snap.

"Mm," she says, now eyeing the pillow. "I thought you'd want to apologize to me."

"What?" I sputter. "For what? You invading my home?"

She shakes her head. "No, for ending our dance early."

I pause, remembering how I deserted her at the Capitol party. I'd made up excuses—upset stomach, long night before, the usual—but avoided Annie for the remainder of the visit. It wasn't easy to do, though, as she managed to appear at random wherever I attempted to hide.

"You may remember that I never asked you to dance. You sort of, er, forced me to."

She considers this, pursing her lips. "You seemed to enjoy it."

"I—" Annie's eyes light up when I stumble over a string of expletives.

"That's not the point, Annie. Look, I'm not sure what you want, but this isn't usually how the whole victor-mentor relationship goes."

"Do you want some pants?"

"What?"

"You seem to be struggling with that pillow."

"Annie, really. I—"

She steps right up to me, places her hands on my chest, and then presses her lips to my chin. She doesn't kiss me, but just rests them there, inhaling.

"Finnick," she says. "I never got to thank you."

I sputter, paralyzed, unable to step away from her. I only clutch the pillow tighter and became aware of the shortness of my breath.

"You don't need to. It was—it was my job."

She pulls back and meets my gaze.

"No," she says. "Not for… getting me out. For not, you know. Laughing. When it

was all over."

"What do you mean—"

"I see them drowning. I see them murdered, mauled, beaten. Every night."

Her eyes sparkle with her tears. I wipe one with my thumb.

"I know," I say.

"I can't sleep. I can't do anything. But then I see you. I don't know why, but I see you and I feel like maybe I can get… get through it. Like you told me to. I don't need much… I just want to see you, to be your friend. Can I… can I be your friend, Finnick?"

I sigh and rest my forehead against hers, feeling the shudders that run through her body as she tries to hold back the tears. She runs her finger along the curve of my jaw, and I can't help but shiver. How did she get here, so close, I wonder.

"I could get you your pants to start."

I laugh, really laugh, as she shields her eyes and fumbles on the ground for a pair of pants. She tosses them to me, does some sort of tightrope walk out of the room, and tells me that she'll be making breakfast when I'm ready.

A friend, I think. I don't think I've ever had one of those. Maybe Mags, my old mentor, would count. I hear Annie's laughter from downstairs and hear her words over and over.

_I just want to see you, to be your friend._

#

I take her out to the ocean. She dives in beneath the small waves, kicking her feet as she disappears beneath the foam. I chase after her, plunging my hands forward. Her dark hair swirls around her cheeks underwater, floating above her eyes. The sea laps at her gaze, sending her back up to the surface for air. I join her, and we gulp at the breeze. She laughs, moving towards me, pressing my hair back behind my ears. Her leg graces mine—slippery, smooth. She then flips over, tumbling backwards into the water. I see her diving deeper, deeper still, and I sink down after her.

I take her hand when I find her, tugging her over to where I spy a bed of oysters. Bubbles slip out of her lips as she laughs, her hand clutched in mine.

I was right: she dances as she swims, or she swims like she dances. We drag our toes along the shallow seabed, fold our hands together, and she touches her nose to mine as her hair envelops both of us.

I point upwards, and we surface once again. I catch my breath, eyeing the sun that looms over us above.

"I didn't think I could do it," she says.

"What?"

She looks up at the sky as a gull flies overhead.

"Swim. After the arena, I didn't think I could."

I'm struck by the urge to kiss her. Not the plain, acted kisses that I give so freely in the Capitol—I want to kiss Annie, to taste her lips on mine. But she's back into the water, crossed beneath where my legs kick gently so that she pops back up on my other side. She puts her arms around my neck, drawing the smooth curves of her body in against the hard angles of my back.

I imagine her digging into me the way that she so deftly hid inside the arena. As I feel her rest her chin on my shoulder, I realize that she's snuck up on me, navigating me as smoothly as she has the water. She's nested inside me and soon, I won't be able to wrench her free.

"We should go back," I say. I don't mean to push away from her, but when I catch her gaze, I see the sadness cross in a fog over her face.

"Okay, Finnick."

She dives away from me, leaving me in the water. I close my eyes, and I imagine that the water becomes snaked with streams of red. I see her floating away, gasping for air, reaching for my arm. I don't catch her. I can't. Her fingers slip under before I've even extended my hand.

#

I avoid her: I begin locking my doors, leaving at odd hours, willing the hours to pass quicker still. For awhile, I seem to have erased her. Then, I taste the salt in the air or spy the sea on one of my walks and she rustles inside of me, refusing to release her hold of me.

_I just want to see you, to be your friend._

It can't be like this, I tell my empty bedroom. I am a pawn to be tossed around the Capitol; I am to be fed to the mouths of that ever-glistening city. A sweet to be savored and then disposed of, I think. Annie, how could she ever fit into something like that? I won't put her at risk. I can't.

Because if there's something President Snow has taught me, it's that victors aren't fit for love or family or even this strange friendship Annie has asked me for. I am his prize. Annie could never afford me, not at the price President Snow has set.

_She's not worth it._

I drag my fist across the floor. Oh, but she is, isn't she? I feel her touch, chaste and careful and fragile.

_ Will you ask me to dance with you?_

#

I have to see her. It's the middle of the night when I tear out of my door and cross the short distance between her home and mine. I ease the door open, stumbling through the darkness, until I find her room. She's not asleep, but gasping for air at the foot of her bed. Her face is streaked with sweat, and there are long scratches up and down her bare arms from where she's torn through the skin with her fingernails.

"Finnick," she whispers, catching me off guard.

She doesn't see me, but remains wrapped up in whatever world refuses to let her breathe. I pad towards her, not wanting to spook her, and settle one of my hands on her knee. She screams, and I place the other hand on her cheek.

"Annie, Annie! It's me. It's… Finnick."

"Finnick?" she stirs, not completely returning from that world, but gaining some air.

"It's me, Annie. I'm here."

I lean forward, pressing my lips against hers. She collapses against me, kissing me hungrily. Something like a sob shakes her chest, reverberating through me as her hands begin a frantic search over my face.

"You're really here."

Her eyes open, and I smile. She immediately traces the corners of my lips, as though permanently setting each part of me in her mind. Her eyes dart over me as she continues to whisper my name.

I realize that I love how my name sounds in her voice: reflected in her, I am whole, not some fragmented slave sent room to room. Annie's kisses fall like raindrops over me: our mouths continue to miss one another, and instead we just set to taking in the different curves of each other's bodies. When our lips do meet, they're to compose clumsy kisses of two people just meeting—really meeting—for the first time. They're so different from the Capitol kisses that I have to pause to catch my breath.

"Why did you stop?" she says, coming up to kiss my nose. "Was it bad?"

I look up at her. "No. You just… it was so different. I didn't know what to do."

Her eyes fall, inadequacy flushing her face. I see in her eyes every lover I've been forced to take in the Capitol. She draws away, sighing as she says, "We don't have to."

"No!" I draw her chin up with my finger. "I want to, Annie. It was good different. It was…"

Annie watches me fumble for the word. It's just in my reach, waiting for me to compose it. Then I catch it, and somehow, the word I choose seems to explain everything.

"Real," I say.

I squeeze her hand as the remnants of a smile creep back over her lips.

"Real." She tastes the word, humming it softly. "Real."

"I'm not used to real, though," I admit. "It will take me some time to learn."

At this, she sits me down on the bed, places her hands on my shoulders, and leans forward. Her hair falls in messy waves over her cheeks, concealing the slight tan of her skin. Her hands run over my chest, my stomach, my legs, my lips. I drink her in, relishing the warmth that she sends through me. I draw her close to me, wrapping my arms around her.

"Here," she says against my ear. "I'll show you."


End file.
